The WRF-Solar model: Current status and on-going developments

The WRF-Solar model was the first numerical weather prediction model specifically tailored for solar irradiance forecasts. Original developments focused on improving the coupling between the cloud-aerosol-radiation components. These developments largely improved the clear sky forecasts and reduced errors in all-sky conditions. More recently, the model has been enhanced with a solar diagnostic package that provides two-dimensional variables to characterize the cloud and radiation fields. Currently, the aerosol physics is being revisited by adding black carbon to the set of aerosols explicitly resolved by the model. This provides a positive impact in the forecasts on days with an important load of aerosols form wildland fires, for example. The model has been also enhanced to provide a probabilistic framework specifically tailored for solar irradiance forecasts. The system is referred to as the WRF-Solar Ensemble Prediction System (WRF-Solar EPS) and increases the added value of the deterministic version of WRF-Solar. To improve short-range irradiance predictions (0-6 h), WRF-Solar was enhanced with the MAD-WRF model component. MAD-WRF strengths are the cloud initialization and cloud integration into the model atmospheric state. This increases the value of WRF-Solar in the first few hours of the forecasts. In this presentation, I will provide an overview of the WRF-Solar model describing its current status and on-going developments that will be incorporated into future releases of the model.